Members of the Collegium of the House of Representatives of the PABiH met with the Standing Rapporteur for BiH in the European Parliament

Members of the Collegium of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Speaker Borjana Krišto and Deputy Speaker Denis Zvizdić, met today with the Standing Rapporteur for BiH in the European Parliament, Cristian Dan Preda.

Thanking the high-level guest for continued support he provided to Bosnia and Herzegovina on its European path, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Borjana Krišto, pointed out that our country is pressured by numerous internal problems stemming from the irregular elections and the failure to achieve full equality of constituent peoples and citizens living in BiH, which altogether seriously slows down our path towards the European Union. Ms. Krišto expressed the concern that problems with the establishment of the Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee (SAPC) will be continued due to problems related to the establishment of the government.

Mr. Denis Zvizdić observed that, unfortunately, the good results of the executive power of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Council of Ministers in this instance, which has fulfilled the greatest number of tasks from the reform agenda over the past four years, have not been followed-up. He pointed out that answers to 655 questions from the additional questionnaire should be finalised by the end of January. Zvizdić added that, bearing in mind the dynamics of the work of the European Parliament in the next few months and the fact that this is practically an election year for this EU body, there are nevertheless realistic prospects for our country to earn the candidate status in May this year.

Mr. Dan Preda re-emphasised the importance of the rapid establishment of the SAPC and the adoption of Rules of Procedure for its work, because stronger co-operation of the Parliamentary Assembly with the European Parliament is a key precondition for faster progress towards the EU. Speaker Krišto added that failure to adopt the Rules of Procedure of the SAPC is not so much a result of political disagreements as it is a result of the lack of mutual trust and we must work much more diligently in the forthcoming period in order to rebuild that trust. (End)